


since we've no place to go

by psikeval



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, M/M, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-19 20:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5979513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lobbyist, lawyer, and all-around pain in the ass Alexander Hamilton did not just happen to drop by in the middle of nowhere to hand Burr <i>cookies</i> and wish him a merry fucking Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was, at one point, seasonally appropriate. now all i have to say for myself is THEY SHOULD BE IN LOVE

 

Senator Burr once said, in a joking tone, that he was quite lucky to have no surviving loved ones, as it made his Christmas season much simpler.

It quickly became clear, from the look on his assistant’s face, that yet again his particular brand of gallows humor had missed its mark, but Aaron nevertheless considers it to be true. When the rest of the world is caught up in the holiday maelstrom of shopping and visits and least favorite uncles, he can leave it all behind and come here, to his family’s cabin in the mountains. The forest and its solitude provide him peace and quiet, a predictable routine.

For example, when he hears an engine running outside, and the wheels of a heavy vehicle crunching slowly over the gravel, Aaron knows it’s Rob and Linda’s truck, because there’s nobody else for miles around and Rob said he’d bring over some extra firewood this afternoon, just in case. So Aaron doesn’t exactly answer his door, with its connotation of finding out who’s on the other side; it would be more accurate to say he opens it to let a friend in, stepping back from the threshold with a ready smile.

It fades very quickly at the sight of Alexander Hamilton.

There’s a shiny rented SUV parked behind Hamilton that just screams ‘I asked for four-wheel drive at the airport because Google Maps showed a dirt road and nature in all its forms is horrifying to me.’ Of course, that only begs the question of how and why he figured out Burr’s unlisted address to accost him. Knowing Hamilton, the answer won’t be pleasant.

Hamilton is bundled up for the weather in a trim, expensive-looking peacoat, black leather gloves and a gauzy, impractical scarf, off-white. Like a photoshoot for a catalog that sells winter clothes to rich people—a designer’s vague idea of what dressing for the cold should look like.

“Hamilton,” says Aaron, tonelessly, because he has no clue what else to say.

“Senator Burr!” he replies brightly, bobbing a little on the balls of his feet. Always so much energy.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just paying you a visit.”

As if that were enough reason for any rational person to fly from New York and wander out into the Appalachian mountains. Hamilton would have had to brave the December airline chaos of crowds and delays to do this, for god’s sake. Aaron takes a slow, deep breath. “Why?”

“I brought cookies!” says Hamilton, so abruptly it could be a reply or just something he’s suddenly remembered. He holds up a brightly colored tin, extending it towards Aaron.

“Hamilton,” he says again. “We’re in the middle of a forest.”

“Yeah. Not where I’d wanna take a vacation, but whatever makes you happy.”

“You had to drive up a mountain.”

“Well, sort of.” Hamilton rubs at his cheeks, which have gone pink from the chill, though that shiny leather his gloves are made of must be even colder. He really is hopeless. “Bit of a winding road for a while, but it flattens out around here, doesn’t it? Nice place for a cabin.”

“Hamilton,” says Aaron for the third time, exasperated. “You did not just happen to be here.”

Instead of answering, Hamilton beams at him. The wind’s been picking up since morning, and Hamilton’s ears and nose are quickly turning pink, some strands of dark hair coming loose from his ponytail. He’s not quite shivering, yet, but—well, it’s nearly Christmas, and Alexander Hamilton is standing on Aaron’s doorstep with a tin full of cookies. As much as he’d like to slam the door and pretend this never happened, Aaron has never been a cruel man.

“It’s cold out here,” he sighs. “You better come in.”

He’s already smiling, so it’s truly absurd that Hamilton’s face is able to light up any further, but somehow it does. At Aaron’s resigned _after-you_ gesture, he bounds inside, trailed by a suspiciously huge shoulder bag that’s been angled behind his back. The door has barely closed behind them when Alexander turns around and says “Burr, we need to talk about juries.”

“I knew it,” Aaron mutters darkly, because he _did_. Lobbyist, lawyer, and all-around pain in the ass Alexander Hamilton did not _drop by_ in the middle of nowhere to hand him _cookies_ and wish him a merry fucking Christmas.

“No,” he tells Hamilton more loudly. “We don’t. Congress is in recess and I’m on vacation.”

“Which means you have time! And I won’t even take that long.”

“Hamilton, when has that ever been true?”

A silence follows in which Hamilton fidgets with the box of cookies, eyebrows raised, and Aaron tries not to bury his face in his hands. It’s obvious what he meant. He’s not going to dignify a double entendre simply because Hamilton’s mind is perpetually trapped in the gutter. He’s _not_.

“Maybe most of the time, I like to take my time on you,” Hamilton suggests innocently.

Christ. “Say what you came here to say,” Aaron hisses, knowing even as he does that Hamilton’s trap has worked perfectly.

“Right!” Hamilton nods, all business, and places the cookies—the _alleged cookies_ , more likely an empty tin he found just for this ridiculous ruse—by the sink. He then draws a massive file folder from his shoulder bag and sets it on the kitchen table. “Cute place.”

“It was my father’s.”

“Okay.”

“The bill isn’t going to pass.”

“It should.”

“Do you need something to drink?”

“No, it’s fine.” He frowns at his clusters of heavily paper-clipped files, switches two, and looks with bemusement at the glass of water Aaron sets next to him anyway. “I said I was fine.”

“If you’re going to talk yourself hoarse for no reason—”

“Not for no reason. _Listen_ to me, Burr.”

“Fine.” He takes refuge in crossing his arms, in the distance he gains by leaning back against the counter, refusing to sit and be a part of this. “Say what you have to say, then get out.”

It sounds nice, and it feels good to say. But Aaron should know by now that staying out of a fight with Hamilton is never quite so simple as that.

 

\--

 

“—by a _jury of their peers_ ,” Burr finds himself saying—half-shouting, really, to have any hope of making himself heard over Hamilton—a full two hours later.

“Their peers are incompetent! Their peers are a bunch of biased, undereducated racists who barely know the law even when it’s been explained and don’t understand half the evidence they’re shown!”

“So now our jurors can’t even grasp facts?” And Hamilton actually has the gall to be surprised when people call him an elitist.

“I was getting there,” Hamilton assures him, sliding out a packet from near the bottom of the steadily spreading pile between them. “Look at this.”

Aaron’s shoulders slump as he exhales and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to.”

“I don’t care.”

“You can’t imagine how that shocks me.”

They’ve been at it for long enough that Aaron gave up standing, though his chair is pushed as far away from the table as possible. It’s so thoroughly covered by Hamilton’s mess that it’s begun to look contagious, a sprawling plague that might soon spread onto his neatly swept floor. At one point Rob did arrive with the promised load of firewood, cheerfully filling the rack inside before stacking more on the porch—but even then, Hamilton couldn’t shut up, going on about skewed demographics and ramifications of defense attorneys’ biases while Aaron tried to get a word in edgewise to thank Rob for everything he’d done.

Only now that Rob is long gone does it occur to Aaron that he could have (and most likely should have) enlisted help in dragging Hamilton from the premises. It seems the only way to be rid of him.

“D’you mind if I have a cookie?”

Aaron raises his eyebrows. “You mean they exist?”

Immediately Hamilton puffs up, indignant. “Of course they do! It’s gingerbread! They’re baked and frosted by hand, and are a very popular gift this time of year. Or so a salesperson told me. I got them at the airport.” And there it is, the reluctant trailing truths of a man who’s never known how to stop while he’s ahead.

“What a kind afterthought,” says Aaron dryly.

“I mean, you can’t show up for Christmas empty-handed. Right?” Hamilton’s voice wavers a bit on the word, unsure. It’s that damned uncertainty that gets to Burr—like he’s not the only one just going through the motions, at a loss for what to do this time of year. Like Hamilton, too, has a past more full of losses than traditions.

It’s the kind of thought that really ruins the grudge he’s trying to keep.

Aaron sighs and waves a hand. “Eat as many as you want.”

Hamilton lurches up from his seat without hesitation, leaving Burr to stare at the paper-strewn disaster and wonder what’s become of his life. The tin pops open behind him, its lid rattling on the counter, and there’s a rustle of waxed paper. “Hey, these are actually good,” Hamilton mumbles around a mouthful of gingerbread, unable to see Burr’s grimace. “Chewy. Milk?”

“In the fridge,” says Aaron, pained. He listens to Hamilton’s movements without turning around to look, but his footsteps only shuffle halfway across the kitchen before stopping dead. When Aaron turns his head, he sees Hamilton by the window, staring blankly outside. “What is it?”

“Hey, Burr,” he says carefully, eyes sliding back to Aaron’s face. “Is it supposed to snow?”

As if he’s an almanac. “Maybe this afternoon. I think Rob — the man you nearly met — said something about it.”

It’s not that he really thinks Rob took offense at Hamilton’s impenetrable focus, that indomitable need to be long-winded and impossible, but Burr can’t help sounding testy about it anyway. As usual, Hamilton’s manners had been deplorable, because all he cared about was talking too much, being the smartest, being _right_ even when there was no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in sight.

It’s an attitude that grates on every part of Aaron Burr, sets his teeth on edge and makes him wish more than anything else that he knew how to stop Alexander’s damn mouth.

“Okay, but. Is it supposed to snow a _lot_?”

“Hamilton, I don’t _know_ ,” Aaron snaps, barely reining in his temper. “I’d planned to be here, not going anywhere or having visitors, so I haven’t bothered to check. Why?”

There’s something unnervingly skittish about the look Hamilton gives him. “Uh. You should probably see this.”

He stands and obeys the implicit request with reluctance, loath to admit that anything Hamilton does can make him nervous—and then stops dead beside Alexander, too stunned to even swear. The sky is thick pale grey, snow drifting down in huge fluffy flakes, so thickly it’s hard to see the trees in the distance. Everything is already covered in at least an inch of white.

“Oh my god,” he mutters, and makes for the door, slipping into his boots on the way.

Outside, the world is silent, muffled the way it can only be on a snowy day far away from everything. Aaron’s breath fogs in the air, and snowflakes fall onto his upturned face, catching in his eyelashes and leaving tiny cold pinpricks on his head. He should’ve grabbed a hat.

There’s hardly any wind, but this is not the kind of snowfall that will be stopping anytime soon. It’s accumulating quickly on the cold, dry ground, and Aaron can’t see anything but a single shade of impenetrable grey in the sky for miles. When he’d considered snow, he’d thought only of watching it fall, alone and in peace; he was not prepared for this.

“Uh, Burr?” says Hamilton, behind him, in the doorway. “What now?”

What now, indeed. He turns and walks back, unable to enjoy the fresh fluffy snow packing down and creaking under his boots. Hamilton is standing on the doormat, under the overhang of roof that serves for a porch, still wearing his fancy, impractical shoes. He looks at Burr like he’s waiting for a verdict—and it _is_ that face, exactly; Aaron would know the nervous set of Hamilton’s eyebrows anywhere.

So he reins in a sigh and makes his ruling. “You can’t drive back in this.”

“But my hotel’s just—” He points feebly downhill, as if that’s meant to be convincing.

“Hamilton, don’t be an idiot. The road’s too steep and it’s coming down fast.”

“But,” he tries again, without anything to add, just frowning and bobbing on the balls of his feet, lip bitten as he stares at where the road used to be. A few snowflakes are caught in his hair and Aaron wants to brush them away, melt them with his fingertips and tuck back the impossibly soft-looking strands that always fall around Hamilton’s face.

It is not the most productive set of urges he’s had today.

“Come on.” He pauses for only a moment, weighing the more pressing practical concerns against how much he should allow himself, before pushing gently at Hamilton’s shoulder. Just that, not lingering, nothing given away by the motion. “You’re letting in cold air.”

Alexander makes a face that’s almost apologetic as he edges backward into the cabin. “So, on the bright side, this’ll give us a great chance to focus on the matter at hand,” he tries.

“Yes,” sighs Aaron, ushering him inside. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Aaron has always considered the cabin’s queen-sized bed to be more space than he needs. He’s even entertained the notion of trading it out for a smaller one, since he only comes here alone and is hardly the largest of men to begin with. It would give him more floor space and a chance to more easily rearrange the room.

But with Hamilton sleeping next to him, it is difficult for Aaron to imagine a space smaller and more constricting.

Hamilton _clings_. It isn’t that he’s cuddly—and thank god for that, because if he was, Aaron would surely go mad within the hour—but he does tend to…latch on, apparently. If Burr let any part of himself cross the boundary between them in the night, or worse yet, brush against Hamilton, as his hand had accidentally done, then all was lost. Hamilton had grabbed hold of him and refused to let go for the longest, most infuriating time.

He held on to Burr’s hand like he’d decided he needed it for something, like he was entitled, and just before Aaron could get properly annoyed and shove him awake, Alexander mumbled wordlessly and pressed their tangled hands to his chest, curled around them. Only after a long while he did let go, leaving Aaron finally — at least, ostensibly — able to move on and sleep.

It just might have been the least restful night of his life.

Now, as muted daylight illuminates the room, Hamilton’s face is mashed into the pillow, mouth open, drooling slightly, his hair an absolute mess, and Burr so badly regrets being a gentleman and offering to sleep between Alexander and the wall. It’ll only be that much harder to make his escape.

“Hamilton?”

Nothing.

“Hamilton,” he tries a little more loudly.

In response, Alexander groans with his eyes scrunched tightly shut and curls himself more thoroughly into a ball, dragging the blankets up over his head.

“Ah,” says Aaron, addressing his grandmother’s neatly stitched quilt for lack of a better audience, his voice cheerfully blank despite the tension in his jaw. His lips curl at the corners like a nervous, or furious, reflex; Burr tends to smile even when he doesn’t want to.

It’s a skill Hamilton has given him cause to perfect.

The quilted lump of Alexander remains unmoved by Aaron’s frustration. All is utterly still around them, the morning chill filling up the house and waiting to be broken, making Aaron’s nose and fingers cold in the meantime. It’s going to be terrible, getting out of bed.

“So I take it you don’t want coffee,” he mutters dryly, mostly to himself.

Hamilton groans again. “Yes. Coffee.”

It’s another few moments before Aaron can tamp down his annoyed smirk enough to proceed, and still longer before he can dredge himself away from the bed’s warmth. He does not trample Hamilton, precisely, in moving over him, but he is certainly less careful with his limbs than he could be, and there’s a fairly satisfying collision of his knee with Hamilton’s hip.

“Ow.”

“ _So_ sorry, Hamilton.”

Aaron tries very hard not to feel irritated anew when Hamilton doesn’t even complain about it, just rolls his lump of covers closer to the center of the bed. He’s not—well, he _is_ on Aaron’s side, technically, but certainly only in pursuit of his goal of taking up as much space as one small man can manage. There’s no reason to feel… _anything_ about it.

After a stop in the bathroom, and a moment spent grimly wondering how much Hamilton will mock the overpriced handmade soap Aaron likes to bring on vacations, he walks out into the living area. He starts the coffee machine without looking, thumb automatically falling on the center button, while pulling aside the curtains with one hand to take stock of the situation.

It’s not actually as bad as he’d feared.

More snow fell during the night, but it’s a clear and sunny day, and he can already look out the windows and see melt dripping down from the roof. Surely he and Hamilton won’t be stuck here together for long, if they can shovel out the driveway and wait for afternoon sun to melt the roads clear.

Content to know the end is at least in sight, Aaron stands there watching the sun brighten over the sparkling white landscape while coffee brews. A truly unnatural number of cardinals have crowded around the birdfeeder in the storm’s wake, plucking out seed and digging up whatever falls into the snow. When Aaron drops the curtain, he’s too snow-blind to see and has to spend a while blinking before the relative darkness of the indoors resolves itself into shapes again.

Then he pours his coffee, and manages to get about a cup’s worth of peace before Hamilton emerges from the bedroom.

As entrances go, it’s rather sluggish and undramatic. His hair is loose, his eyes squinted nearly shut, and the mothball-scented set of spare pajama pants from the attic crawlspace are overwhelming his legs, pooling around his ankles. (Aaron has no idea what relative might have left them here, in a dusty box marked ‘DONATE,’ or why they’re such a virulent shade of green.)

Alexander shuffles forward and sniffs, like a rumpled, sleepwalking bloodhound. “Coffee.”

There’s no question in his voice, but he stares at the counter for long enough that Aaron finally ventures, “Yes.”

Hamilton nods, his head bobbing slowly and steadily for much longer than is necessary. Despite his frown, his eyes have yet to focus on anything in particular. “Coffee.”

With no further attempts to speak, Hamilton starts haphazardly opening cabinets and drawers, spinning the lazy susan an entire 360 degrees despite it being visibly empty, like the rotation is has entranced him. He pokes for a little too long at the catch-all drawer of big utensils, mixing spoons and aged can openers, perhaps because he wonders if one of them will work. That, or he’s forgotten what he’s looking for in the first place.

“The drawer to the left of the sink and the cabinet over the toaster,” Aaron finally says, irrationally annoyed despite having deliberately refused to set things out.

The words take a few seconds to sink in. Hamilton frowns and slowly looks around, like he’s running Burr’s words through his head until the meaning reveals itself. After some fumbling, apparently caused by his mixing up the sink and the toaster, Hamilton manages to get an old blue mug with a corporate logo and a slightly tarnished soup spoon. None of the mismatched dishes and silverware are particularly new, and most of them have seen better days. Hamilton, clutching the spoon in his left hand while filling the mug with coffee, doesn’t appear to notice.

He adds some sugar, nearly drains the mug with a few large gulps, tops it up again and then steadily drinks all the way to the nearest chair. This fortifies Hamilton enough that he’s able to set down his coffee, even if he’s not yet prepared to relinquish his grip on the mug. His eyes are very large, and very dark, and still bleary with sleep as he stares at Aaron. “Morning.”

Burr gives him a fake, thin-lipped smile, safer than any genuine reaction. “It sure is.”

“Hm.” Alexander finishes his coffee yet again, and seems to deeply regret the distance between him and the machine. Perhaps he’s wishing he’d just brought the pot along, too. “Nice bed.”

“I’ve always liked it.”

The first sign of actual, conscious emotion on Hamilton’s face is discomfort, bordering on nervousness, which Aaron did not remotely expect. Alexander’s eyes dart back in the direction of the bed before he goes back to looking at his coffee, fingers curling around the handle. “Did I bother you?”

“Well, now that you mention it,” says Burr, flawlessly deadpan. He lifts his eyebrows at Hamilton’s growing consternation—it seems that not even Alexander can be a menace while half-asleep in an undershirt and borrowed pants. He mostly just looks…smaller than Burr always pictures him. And tired. “You didn’t start a single fight in your sleep. I assumed you’d died.”

When Alexander laughs, head ducked like he’s hiding, lashes dark against his cheek as he grins crookedly down at the table, Aaron can’t remember why on earth he thought joking would be a good idea. He’d not counted on Hamilton actually finding it funny. “Heh. Okay.”

“Otherwise it went as well as could be expected.” Aaron makes an easy, meaningless gesture for Hamilton’s benefit and willfully does not think about the contented sound Alexander made when he had Burr’s hand held securely to his chest. Theodosia used to talk nonsense in her sleep. None of it has to mean anything. “I think you’ll be able to leave today.”

Hamilton presses his lips together and nods, and nods, and keeps nodding his head like he’s forgotten how to stop and might actually lull himself to sleep. “Hm. More coffee.”

“Seems wise,” Aaron murmurs, more to himself than anything, as Hamilton shuffles back to fill his mug again. This time he even has the patience to add a little milk.

It’s after this third cup that he seems to start reviving, though when he tries to look outside he quickly recoils from the light with a disgruntled huff. It’s not endearing. Hamilton is a grown man, currently inconveniencing Aaron terribly, and he is not cute. Standing his ground on this becomes easier when Alexander comes back to the table and starts poking through his files, like he wants his first full sentence to recommence the argument.

“How cold is it out there? I mean like aside from the obvious—cold as balls, bitter cold, the wind bites shrewdly it is very—”

“Hamilton, I don’t need a thesaurus.”

“Of course you don’t. You’ve got me.”

Aaron slowly draws in a breath, exhales, and drinks some coffee. “I’ll check the temperature later.”

“Okay,” says Hamilton, in a tone that clearly indicates it’s not okay with him at all. He only lasts a few precious, silent seconds before adding on, “But now might be useful, just for the record.”

This feels like exactly the sort of grating claustrophobic situation where people end up murdering each other. Like _The Shining._ Burr has never actually seen it, and has only a vague idea what it’s about, but he does think that being stuck with Hamilton for days on end would give him a sense of deep kinship with the face Jack Nicholson is making on the cover.

“All right. Fine.” Aaron goes to the door and shrugs into his coat, slips his feet into his second-best snow boots, which are considerably more manageable than the knee-high waterproof monstrosities he keeps around for blizzards.

“Uh, Burr? Where are you going?”

“To check the temperature, Hamilton,” he replies, polite smile plastered across his face, before stepping out into the blissful quiet outside and shutting the door behind him. It’s almost tempting to stay there on the porch until the bracing chill can calm him down, but he still isn’t nearly awake enough to handle the sight of so much blinding white. Aaron only dawdles for a little while, admiring the picturesque snow-covered trees on the mountain’s downward slope, before he does what he came for and goes back into the cabin.

“Twenty-five,” he tells Hamilton while hanging up his coat.

“An actual thermometer? Who does that?”

“Out here, it’s usually better than something electronic.”

“Really, because it doesn’t seem better when you have to go outside and freeze just to know how freezing it is.”

“It’s more reliable. Unless you wanted to check the weather on your phone.”

From Alexander’s grimace, you’d think he’d just been reminded of a personal tragedy. “No signal.”

“Like I said. On the rare occasions I care about the temperature, I’d rather have something that works no matter what.”

After heaving a long and theatrical sigh, immensely put-upon by the living conditions in the place he has _voluntarily chosen_ for the sole apparent purpose of harassing Burr into changing his vote, Hamilton scoops up the loaf of bread on the counter and holds it up. “Mind if I—?”

“There’s more in the freezer. Go ahead.”

While Hamilton goes about making toast, Burr sits back down and idly pushes around the file folders all but covering his table. Among its brethren overflowing with clipped-together stacks of documents, there’s one folder that looks practically empty. Against his own better judgment, and after looking around to make sure Hamilton isn’t watching, Aaron opens it.

There are only a few scraps of paper inside, first among them a clipping from a Sunday paper.

Burr stares down at it, reading the text and involuntarily mouthing the words. As if, by doing so, the inclusion of Dilbert in Hamilton’s arsenal of evidence will start to make sense. He stands, then turns back to the table, picking up the clipping. Even with it resting in his hands, the flimsy greyish paper gone soft around the edges, he still can’t quite believe this is happening.

“Hamilton,” he says, “this is a comic strip.”

“One that’s indicative of widespread indifference towards this exact problem!” says Hamilton without missing a beat, turning on his heel and abandoning the toaster entirely, eyes alight at the prospect of discussing his pet topic further. Aaron wants to kiss him for being so completely predictable.

Ah.

Best to rewind that train of thought.

What he meant, Aaron tells himself, detaching rather desperately from the current situation, is that Hamilton’s enthusiasm is contagious. That he, or any other unfortunate soul on this earth, might at any juncture find Hamilton attractive is entirely beside the point. It has to be. Now is not the time for Aaron’s weaknesses to surface, nor will there ever _be_ a time. It’s only a comic strip.

“Seriously,” Hamilton insists. “It is so much more than just a comic strip.”

“Of course it is,” Aaron murmurs, trying to be solemn. It should be easy, in his current wretched state, but he can’t _help_ smiling at the earnest conviction on Hamilton’s face, and Hamilton grins back at him, delighted to have cracked the façade, and oh, _oh_ , this is an absolute disaster.

“You should read it.”

“ _Hamilton_.” A single word, suffused with all his suffering.

“Would it kill you to call me Alexander?”

“No,” he concedes. “If I die, it will be of annoyance.”

“Oh, come on,” says Hamilton, moving far too close with his smug broad grin and his head ducked down to catch Aaron’s carefully averted eyes. “It’s not that bad,” he says, as if his hand isn’t resting on Aaron’s elbow, warm and familiar and agonizing to endure. As if there’s more of an inch of space between them. Aaron can feel the radiating heat of Hamilton’s body all down his front, and it would be so easy to—

“Says the man who descended like a biblical plague on my Christmas vacation.”

“So we get to spend some time together. What’s so bad about that?”

“You,” says Aaron, every line of his body so tense and stiff that it genuinely pains him, “are what’s bad about it.”

Hamilton’s hand shifts on his elbow, holding a bit more securely. The adjustment isn’t nearly enough to feel like a carress, nor should the softening of Hamilton’s smile be interpreted as anything but the expression slowly fading. “I know you, Burr. You’ll come around.”

“Your toast is ready.”

“Right!” Of course Hamilton’s able to let him go and walk away, completely unaffected, more concerned about his breakfast than the mess he’s making of Burr. “Wanna split it?”

Aaron rubs at the bridge of his nose, which doesn’t help in the slightest. “No.”

 

\--

 

“No,” he says again, hours later; the word has become such an integral part of his vocabulary today that it feels as if he’s training a wayward puppy.

His morning predictions feel incredibly foolish when Burr recalls them now, even taking into account his sincere (and as it turns out, quite misguided) belief that he actually owned a snow shovel. Their supply of small talk is all but exhausted, and even Burr’s obstinate optimism has to admit that sun or no sun, the temperature’s been dropping since eleven this morning and there’s no way Hamilton’s driving out of here today.

So instead, naturally, he’s sitting with Hamilton in front of the fire they’ve painstakingly built up in the fireplace, having more blue folders pushed across the coffee table at him.

“I said no.”

“Come on,” says Alexander, like this will be the tactic that wheedles Burr into compliance. “What else are we going to do while we’re stuck here?”

By now they’ve broken into Burr’s drawer of warm socks, and the pile of sweatshirts in the back of the closet. Aaron took his warmest Princeton hoodie, with its thick fuzzy lining and familiar frayed spots along the seams. Hamilton grabbed the one from the Outer Banks that Burr had to buy when he was stuck there for a series of meetings, freezing in an unseasonably cold April he’d failed to pack for and surrounded by tourist-trap souvenir shops.

Aaron sighs and picks up the file, a concession that he regrets almost instantly.

“These cases aren’t even American!”

“No, but they’re important conceptually.”

“ _Hamilton_ ,” he says sharply enough that Alexander blinks in surprise. Aaron drops the folder loudly onto the floor and closes his eyes for just a moment, just to breathe. “Why are you here?”

Instead of answering straightaway, like Burr expects, Alexander shuts his mouth and swallows, eyes darting over Burr, all the good humor gone from his face. He clears his throat, looking down at his hands, and Aaron tries very hard to feel nothing at all when Hamilton licks his lips.

“Okay. You know that time I showed up at your place in DC in the middle of the night, asking you to help me write that piece on debt reform?”

(All but bursting with enthusiasm, even past midnight, his hands finding Aaron with every other word and his smiles blinding until Aaron couldn’t think, couldn’t manage much of anything except asking him to leave. Hamilton was too much, in that cramped and quiet apartment he bought after losing Theodosia—the space wasn’t made to contain so much light.)

“I turned you down.”

“I know. But I felt like, maybe, you sort of wished you hadn’t. Or—sorry, maybe that’s overstepping, but I wondered if maybe we could’ve gone somewhere with it, working together. You’re so fucking good at this. At everything,” Hamilton amends, laughing softly with just the slightest hint of bitterness, so resigned it makes Aaron’s throat ache. In a silence turned suddenly oppressive, Alexander runs a hand through his hair, twisting it around the curve of his fingers and letting it fall. “So I, uh. Kind of came out here on a whim. I guess.”

Aaron tugs at the cuffs of his sweatshirt and sighs. Whim or not, and flattery notwithstanding, every bit of Hamilton’s conduct has been entirely inappropriate. There’s no good reason to be anything but annoyed with how his space has been so deliberately invaded yet again.

It’s just that Aaron knows himself, and knows how he comes across to others—the widower who never mentioned his wife when she lived, the quiet smiling senator, unfailingly polite, reticent and reserved no matter what the circumstances. In attempting to construct a foundation upon which he could live without Theodosia, Burr built nothing but greater distance between himself and the people around him, a cool and cheerful surface deflecting all attempts to reach him.

He’s unused to the idea of anyone not just giving up.

For a while Aaron just lets the silence stretch, filled by the flickering crackle of kindling and firewood burning. The heat on his face has become an almost solid thing, the skin of his hands pleasantly baked by the fire instead of tingling, half-numb with cold.

“Hamilton, this is vacation. If you keep bringing up work, I’ll be honor-bound to kill you.”

“What?” says Hamilton, grinning, fazed not at all by this threat upon his life. His eyebrows are climbing to an alarming height on is forehead to illustrate his incredulity. Now if he would just stop _smiling_ at Aaron like that. “What, you and me, not talk about politics?”

“You and me,” Burr intones, nodding solemnly.

“Ohhh.” Alexander is laughing already, shoulders merrily shaking with it. “This should be good.”

 

\--

 

Hamilton is placed in charge of dinner for the evening, meaning he halfheartedly stirs a pan of Spaghetti-Os on the stove while they drink beer and ruin their appetite with cookies. And while these cookies may have been a flimsy pretense for barging into Burr’s vacation uninvited, Aaron is willing to give credit where credit is due: they’re pretty delicious. The cardamom ones, especially.

“All right,” Hamilton announces with a truly dangerous smile, setting aside the wooden spoon and ignoring the sauce it smears on the counter. “Truth time, Burr. Did you really set your dorm on fire at Princeton?”

“Okay. Yes. But in my defense!” he protests, fighting the automatic urge to smile back as Hamilton laughs at him. “In my defense, I was drunk, and my roommate really wanted to light this fancy scented candle he’d bought to hide the smell of weed. Then I found this lighter in my desk drawer. So I’m holding the lighter like _this_ —” He demonstrates the angle of his wrist, and Hamilton winces theatrically. “Yeah, so my sleeve caught and I freaked out.”

“This I would’ve paid to see.”

“I was _on fire_.”

“Yeah, but,” Alexander waves this away. “No lasting damage.”

“There was a lot of yelling. I threw the sweater in the trashcan, which was metal, so it felt like a good idea until all the papers caught and it was ten times worse. And I’m—” Burr breaks off, laughing helplessly at his own story and unable to stop himself when Hamilton looks so _happy_ , “I’m throwing cups at it, hoping one of them’s full enough to douse it, when my roommate screams and kicks the whole trashcan over. Just everything. All on the floor.”

“Oh my god.”

“So then fire alarms and sirens and a disciplinary hearing. Our suitemates were ready to kill us.”

“Their stuff got burnt?”

“It was equal-opportunity destruction.” Aaron picks at the label on his bottle and shrugs, tries to smile philosophically. “But on the bright side, when it was over, you could not smell the weed.”

For once, his sense of humor hits the mark. Hamilton laughs like it’s been shocked out of him, like he’s delighted, his eyes sparkling joyfully—all for Aaron. It’s too much to take in. It winds him, strikes him right in the center of his chest and leaves him gulping down beer and feeling honestly relieved that this never happens, that however many times they cross paths, however often they wind up together, making Hamilton _like_ him remains an anomaly. It’s not the sort of thing Aaron feels likely to survive in larger doses.

Tomorrow, when he’s not on his third beer and pleasantly buzzed, he’ll no doubt be chagrined that he told Hamilton any of this. It’s part of another life, one he now so carefully skirts around, and easy ammunition for Hamilton to mock him in the future, should he feel so inclined.

But it’s nice, for just a while, to sit here soaking up the warm glow of Alexander’s laughter and not worry about anything at all.

 

 


End file.
